Paul Hausser

Paul Hausser (7 October 1880-21 December 1972) was a Lieutenant-General of the Reichswehr (German Army) of the Weimar Republic and called the "Papa" of the Waffen-SS due to his role in its founding and being an eminent leader of it. Hausser lost an eye in combat in World War II and was also shot in the jaw, and after the war he tried to rehabilitate the status of the Waffen-SS.

Biography
Paul Hausser was born on 7 October 1880 in Brandenburg an der Havel, then a part of the Kingdom of Prussia (now Germany). Hausser came from a Prussian military family, and he enlisted in the Imperial German Army in 1892. He served as a Lieutenant in the German 155th Infantry Regiment in Posen, Poland in the 1890s and became a German staff officer during World War I. After the war's end, he was made a colonel of the Reichswehr military of the Weimar Republic. In 1932 he retired with the rank of Major-General, but he joined the Stahlhelm First World War veterans paramilitary organization, later incorporated into the SS. Hausser became the commander of a motorized infantry division in October 1939 during the start of World War II with the invasion of Poland, and the division became the 2nd SS Division Das Reich. During the 1940 invasion of France and the 1941 Operation Barbarossa assault on the Soviet Union, Hausser was awarded twice, and he lost an eye in fighting the Russians. Hausser was able to avoid encirclement at Kharkov and recaptured it in 1943, and he took over the II SS Panzer Corps. This corps fought in the Battle of Kursk in the mammoth tank battle at Prokhorovka in 1943, and in September it was dispatched to the Istrian Peninsula in Yugoslavia (present-day Croatia) to put down partisans. 2,000 partisans and 2,000 civilians were killed, while 936 Germans were killed.

In June 1944, Hausser replaced Friedrich Dollmann on his suicide as the commander of the German 7th Army, and he fought against the Allies in Normandy during the Falaise Gap campaign. The German army was successful in holding back the Allies for two months, but the Americans in the southwest and the British, Polish, and Canadians in the northeast pushed inwards against German forces centered at Falaise. Hausser's forces were besieged in the gap and on 21 August 1944 they made their last stand at the Battle of Chambois, where the 7th Army's remnants retreated to. The last of the 7th Army armor was destroyed and their remaining soldiers were killed or captured. The Germans were forced to surrender, and Hausser was wounded in the jaw while commanding his forces. From January to April 1945 he commanded Army Group G in the Rhine and Bavaria, ending the war at Haar on 5 May 1945.

Hausser defended the Waffen-SS's reputation after the war alongside Albrecht Kesselring, and he authored two books on the Waffen-SS after the war. He died on 21 December 1972 in Ludwigsburg, Baden-Wurttemberg, West Germany.